The technology continues to be an ally in the search for cure or vaccine against coronavirus. This time, the initiative comes from crypto miner CoreWeave, the largest Ethereum blockchain miner in the United States, which is redirecting the processing power of 6 thousand GPUs to treatment research for the coronavirus.
Developed in partnership with Stanford University’s Folding@home project, the research hopes to find a differentiated approach to the development of coronavirus drugs. The proposal is to connect thousands of computers from around the world to form a supercomputer, which will be used for studies on the disease.
CoreWeave co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Brian Venturo, says that when the idea came up, the team didn’t think twice about starting the project and was very excited to be able to help. According to him, in a few minutes a testing system was developed.
How can a crypto miner help in the cure of the coronavirus?
Since then, the project has been growing and has taken shape quickly. Thus, CoreWeave currently contributes with more than half of the overall computing capacity of the coronavirus area of the Folding@home.
The Folding@home is a kind of laboratory at Stanford University, which uses the idle resources of personal computers around the world to conduct disease researches. The project is decentralized similarly to the bitcoin.
For that reason, instead of a research firm alone using a huge computer to do research, Folding@home uses the computing power of anyone who wants to participate from all over the world – even if it’s just a laptop with little unused computing power.
Despite the work of many research agencies around the world, there is still no cure or vaccine for the coronavirus. However, Venturo is optimistic about the positive results already achieved by the Folding@home in relation to other diseases
“Their research has already had profound impacts on the front line for the development of HIV-defense drugs. In this way, we hope that our computational power will help in the fight against coronavirus”, Venturo told Coindesk
